Relatives, Trucking Company Settle Suit

Star-Telegram

Nine months after Janie Bartula died in a fiery chain-reaction freeway crash caused by a tractor-trailer ramming into a row of cars, her family has settled a lawsuit against the trucking company for $24 million.

Lawyers, who claimed the driver worked longer hours than the law allows, called the recent settlement one of the largest in a wrongful death suit involving a single fatality in Tarrant County.

It was reached while Congress is reviewing proposed rules requiring more rest time and electronic monitors for long-haul truckers to reduce accidents caused by tired drivers.

The suit by husband Floyd Bartula of River Oaks and his daughters alleged that driver fatigue contributed to the Sept. 11 wreck that killed Janie Bartula, 49, in north Fort Worth.

The settlement is being paid by an insurance company for Refrigerated Transport of Dallas, the company that had leased the 18-wheeler and screened the driver involved in the crash, said Fort Worth lawyer John Jose, who with Scotty MacLean represented Floyd Bartula and his daughters, Angelina Lynn Cox and Rebecca Deann Lucas.

Neither company officials nor their attorneys could be reached to comment yesterday.

Lucas, 28, said her family hopes the suit will help persuade lawmakers to adopt stricter laws governing truckers' hours.

She said the settlement amount seemed appropriate because it "wouldn't have put them out of business but it would have turned heads."

Janie Bartula, a retired telephone operator who regularly baby-sat her preschool-age grandson, was driving northbound on Interstate 35W near the Loop 820 interchange when her Honda got caught in the Saturday morning wreck in a construction area.

John Ray Rush of Fort Smith, Ark., was hauling a small load of produce from Fort Worth to a Wal-Mart distribution center in Clarksville, Ark., Jose said. Rush was driving a truck owned by Bates Trucking and leased by Refrigerated Transport.

According to police and news reports, Bartula's car was behind a truck pulling a horse trailer and in front of a pickup when the vehicles slowed for construction at Western Center Boulevard in north Fort Worth.

The police report said Rush's 18-wheeler didn't slow down enough and rear-ended the pickup into Bartula's car. The pickup was pushed out of the way, and Rush's truck then hit Bartula's vehicle and the horse trailer.

The suit alleged that Refrigerated Transport improperly screened Rush for employment because he was driving with a Texas license though he lived in Arkansas. The plaintiffs' lawyers also said the company never required Rush to turn in logs of the hours he drove. Jose said other records suggested Rush had been working more than federal law allows.

A Bridgeport couple, Thomas and Donna Mann, were injured. They joined the Bartula suit but settled their claims earlier, MacLean said.

Jose said the new regulations proposed by the U.S. Transportation Department "are precisely the type of measures which would have prevented this collision."

He said he hopes the suit will show that tired drivers cannot only hurt other motorists but also cause serious financial consequences for their employers.

"Fatigued drivers really are ticking time bombs on the roads," he said. "When they go off, they have catastrophic effects on everybody."

Among other things, the proposed rules would allow long-haul truckers to drive 12 hours at a time, with two hours of break time factored in, followed by 10 consecutive hours off. Drivers would have to get "weekend" time and have monitoring devices instead of hand-kept logs.

The government estimates that drowsy truck and bus drivers cause 755 deaths yearly and that the regulations would eliminate 115 of those fatalities.

Critics, including the American Trucking Association, say the proposals are unrealistic and costly.

In testimony before a congressional subcommittee last week, Donald Schneider, with Schneider National, said they were "a well-intentioned idea gone very wrong."

He said the regulations would reduce the amount experienced drivers could earn, endanger the public by putting thousands of inexperienced truckers on the roads and raise the cost of shipping goods. His testimony was posted on the ATA Web site.

Congress is accepting public comment until the end of October.

Copyright 2000 Star-Telegram, Inc.
Record Number: 1035068